Govt to begin Cancelled 2G telecom spectrum auction Tomorrow

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The government will begin tomorrow the auction for telecom spectrum through which it is hoping to meet Rs 40,000 crore revenue target.

The auction for the airwaves or frequencies freed from the cancellation of 122 telecom licenses, belonging to mainly eight companies, by the Supreme Court in February, will start at 0900 hours on Monday.

"We have taken quick decision, firm decisions in the telecom sector. The result of which is that we are in process of auction. 12th of November that auction will start," Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said at an event on Saturday.

The cancelled permits included Uninor's 22 licences, Loop Telecom (21), Sistema Shyam (21), Idea Cellular including Spice Communications (13), Videocon (21), Etisalat DB formerly Swan Telecom (15), S-Tel (6) and Tata Teleservices (3 CDMA licences).

Instead of auctioning entire spectrum freed from cancellation of licences, the government is auctioning a maximum of 11 blocks of airwaves frequencies in each circle, barring Delhi and Mumbai where there are only eight blocks, to attract high price for spectrum.


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2G auction: Bids worth Rs. 9,200 crore made on first day; Delhi, Mumbai find no takers



There has been tepid response to the online auction for 2G telecom spectrum with the government getting bids worth only about Rs. 9,000 crore, or less than one-fourth of what it had expected to earn, after seven rounds of auction on the first day. Bidding will now continue on Wednesday.

Two key circles—Delhi and Mumbai—did not receive any bids on the first day.

After the end of the seventh round, the government, which had hoped to raise about Rs. 40,000 crore in revenue, had received bids worth only Rs. 9,224.75 crore. With telcos finding the base price for bidding too high, and with all companies interested in CDMA spectrum withdrawing their names leading to no auction, analysts had halved their projection for proceeds from the auction to around Rs. 20,000 crore.

At the end of auction on the first day, there had been bids for 98 blocks across 18 circles of the total 176 blocks in 22 circles that were up for grabs.

Here is how the bids have gone: Nine blocks for Uttar Pradesh (East), 10 for UP (West), eight each for Gujarat and Bihar, seven in Assam, six each in West Bengal, Haryana, Orissa, J&K, Madhya Pradesh and North-East, five in Maharashtra, four each in Andhra Pradesh, Kolkata and Tamil Nadu, and one each in Himachal Pradesh, Kerala and Punjab.


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